3 Kickstarter fashion companies in Boston

Jamaica Plain resident Aubrie Pagano’s Kickstarter company, Bow & Drape, tries to simplify the process of dress sizing for women by eliminating the measuring tape. Customers can try on three sizes, and ship back the two that don’t fit. But the most innovative part of Bow & Drape’s approach is that it gives women the technology to design their own made-to-order dresses. The company’s website features six silhouettes, inspired by classic dresses. From those styles, women can choose sleeve length, hem length, color, and embellishments.
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Handout photo

Aubrie Pagano, founder and CEO of the company Bow and Drape, in one of her designs.
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The three MIT graduate students involved in Ministry of Supply (From left: Kit Hickey, Aman Advani, and Gihan Amarasiriwardena) found that gents wearing dress shirts were none-too-pleased with a lack of evolution. Before heading into the process of designing their Apollo shirt, which begins shipping this week, the entrepreneurs talked to nearly 200 men about dress shirts — and these men did not give the wardrobe staple high marks for comfort. Which could explain why the Kickstarter campaign for Ministry of Supply raised more than 12 times its goal of $30,000. In the process, Ministry of Supply broke the record for most money raised by a fashion-start-up on Kickstarter.
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Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

‘The last innovation in men’s dress shirts was 30 years ago,” explained Kit Hickey (pictured), one of the founders of Ministry of Supply. “I think the last was the Brooks Brothers no-iron shirt. But in general it’s an area where no innovation exists.”
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dina Rudick/Globe Staff

The heat regulating dress shirt that launched the Kickstarter campaign for Ministry of Supply.
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Barry Chin/Globe Staff

Pablo Bello modeled an "Agent" moisture wicking, anti-microbial performance dress shirt created by Ministry of Supply at their office’s in the Leather District.
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Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff

The idea for Roxbury-based Project Repat came to Ross Lohr (right), CEO and founder, when he approached the vegetable-carrying rickshaw that tipped over and caused a traffic snarl during his trip to Kenya. To keep the onslaught of T-shirts out of the landfills of developing nations, Lohr and business partner Nathan Rothstein (left) first envisioned launching a company where the tees in Kenya would be sewn together into blankets in Africa, and then shipped and sold in the US. It was only after they hit their Kickstarter goal that they came up with a more practical solution: Keep those T-shirts in the US, make the blankets here, and in the process, employ Massachusetts residents to do the sewing.
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